The Bachelor Girl's Guide to Murder

by Rachel McMillan

  Tippy turned to leave.

  Forbes grabbed her arm. “You’ve got it all wrong, DeLuca. We’re not here to see you at all.”

  “Pity,” Ray said sardonically.

  Tony edged in. “We’re here to see this young lady. If you’ll kindly get on with your business.”

  “Tippy,” Ray said, widening his stance slightly, “you seem to already know Mr. Forbes here. Allow me to present Tony Valari, my brother-in-law and father to my little nephew, Luca. For whom he daily sets a shining example.”

  “Silenzio, Ray!”

  Forbes tightened his grip on Tippy. “Come on, young lady.”

  Ray felt ill. “Oh, don’t start this again. Does your nose need another adjustment, Forbes?”

  “This has nothing to do with you!” Forbes grabbed Ray’s lapel with his free hand. “I haven’t forgotten, DeLuca.”

  Ray wished for a nice, quiet hole to sink into.

  “Problem here?”

  They all four turned at the rap of a stick and the sudden appearance of a constable in hat and regalia.

  “Constable Forth!” Ray’s relief was audible in his voice.

  Forbes let go of Ray.

  Jasper’s eyes narrowed at Tony and Forbes. “The Morality Squad is getting rather violent these days.” Though not as bulky as Forbes, Jasper’s height gave him the advantage.

  Tony slipped away down the street. Forbes lingered, watching Jasper’s stick thumping the pavement.

  “Your friend has the right idea,” Jasper said. “I suggest you also go about your business, Mr. Forbes.”

  “Just doing my duty, Constable.” He spat the latter word. “Montague’s orders.”

  “Montague is at that big soirée. So I am sure he won’t mind your taking a break from your unbridled enthusiasm. Besides, it looks to me that this young lady was not without an escort, so you have no reason to detain her.” Jasper thumped the ground a few more times.

  With a growl at Jasper and Ray, Forbes turned and walked away.

  “You all right, Ray?” Jasper asked kindly.

  “Thanks to you.”

  “What about you, miss?” he asked Tippy.

  The girl was stiff, except for a slight trembling in her hands. Perhaps she was imagining what could have happened had Ray and Jasper not been around.

  Jasper extended the crook of his arm to her. “I’ll see you safely home.” With a quick smile to Ray he led Tippy off into the night.

  Ray fell against a lamppost and caught his breath. Clearly, a girl could not end her association with Gavin Crawley that easily. His eyes flitted back in the direction of the Elgin Theatre, where light spilled over the sidewalk.

  What did that mean for Jem?

  He didn’t want to think about it. He settled his bowler on his head, hoped that Skip would finish up for him, and set off in the direction of St. Joseph’s.

  Merinda looked around for DeLuca, but he had long since left. On the other side of the room, Jem was yawning. Merinda couldn’t blame her: Crawley was insufferable company. Though she couldn’t see him now and wondered if he had also left. Montague was making a falsely humble speech that was spilling over itself with a long list of his strengths.

  Finally reunited, Jem told her that, no matter how it furthered their investigations, she could not stand another moment in Crawley’s company, and she would entertain his advances no further. However, having seen the Winter Garden Theatre, she was adamant that they stay long enough for Merinda to steal a peek herself.

  Merinda agreed on the condition that they wait out the rest of the Montague’s speech in the vicinity of the refreshment table.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The Hog has become my home. There’s something comforting about the smell of wood shavings and fresh ink and pulp mingling with the hops and barley from the nearby distillers. In the summer, the seagulls caw while the ship’s horns belch as they pass the rim of the harbor.

  From a journal Jem has nearly committed to memory

  Ray flicked the electric lights off. While most of the city’s papers had had reliable electricity for at least a dozen years, in this respect as in all others, the Hog trailed behind. The lights buzzed and danced before finally extinguishing.

  The sky was candy pink as he clicked the door behind him and hurried back to his bed at St. Joseph’s. The last beams of sun were yawning over the roofs of the distilleries, and men outside St. Joe’s were milling around. Ray spotted Lars on one side of the rickety porch, a notebook open on his lap. As Ray was meandering over to join him, he heard his name bellowed from the street. Ray and Lars looked up.

  “Forbes,” Ray said, “go away.”

  “Tony and I want to have a little chat. About last night.”

  Ray noticed Tony hovering beside a shrub nearby.

  Lars looked confused.

  Ray shrugged his shoulders at the big Swede. He slumped down the walkway and onto Elizabeth Street. “What do you want to talk about?

  “You interrupted us.”

  “From accosting that poor girl?”

  Forbes took Ray’s collar. “You get in a lot of people’s business, you know that?”

  “Part of my trade,” Ray said uneasily. He didn’t like the grip Forbes had on him.

  “Not anymore,” Tony said, stepping into Ray’s face. “Mr. Montague’s tired of you—and your paper.”

  Ray could easily take Tony, but Forbes? Forbes was taller. Much taller. Ray, on the other hand, was faster.

  Which was good, because at that moment, Tony reared back to deliver a punch. Ray slipped aside and set off down Elizabeth Street.

  Ray only got as far as Agnes Street before Forbes caught up. He grabbed Ray and, in the same movement, drove his fist right into the stomach, taking his breath. The second was even harder, and Ray was sure it had broken a rib. Unable to peer beyond the fuzz in his eyes, Ray tried feebly to avoid more impacts. More blows fell, and one landed square on his jaw, rattling his teeth.

  Then he was pushed back and someone stood over him. A blurry figure grappled with Forbes, ducking punches and landing blows of his own.

  Ray tried to keep his eyes open. The world was spinning and sickly green. His breath spurted in chugs and gasps. There came a sound of a large body striking the ground hard, and with unfocused eyes he beheld a large man chasing off two smaller figures who looked a lot like Forbes and Tony.

  Then that someone had an arm around Ray and was lifting him up.

  Ray blinked at his savior. “Lars?” He felt the sticky blood at his temple and pressed a hand into his aching ribs.

  Lars spoke in Swedish in sympathetic tones.

  Ray assured him he was fine. He bent over to catch his breath, then he straightened as gingerly as he could. “Thank you, my friend. You really came through.” He held onto Lars’s arm a moment and coughed. Lars’ eyes clouded with worry. “I’m fine. I just have to see someone. I’ll see you later. Thank you again.”

  He fumbled in his pocket for a few bills and splurged for a cab ride. Lars helped him in and the cab drove off.

  “Where to?” the driver asked, raising an eyebrow as he noted the blood on the side of his face. “Nearest hospital?”

  “No.” Ray couldn’t go to his sister’s, not with Tony lurking about. “Take me to 395 King Street West.”

  “Merinda, there is an unmarried man asleep in our house.”

  “It’s not my fault he fell asleep,” said Merinda, barely glancing up.

  Jem had returned from the nickelodeon with Tippy, waltzed into the sitting room, and almost sat on poor, bloodied Ray. “I’m not moving him,” Merinda continued. “Mrs. Malone was a fright having to wash him up and bandage him. I still think we should go to the doctor.”

  Jem looked over her shoulder and then shot Merinda a pleading glance.

  “Mrs. Malone is here. And if you go to sleep, as I intend to do, then you’ll forget and in the morning, at the breakfast table, in broad daylight, it won’t seem so odd after all.” Jem looked paine
d and unconvinced. “Jemima.” Merinda’s voice was firm. “He gave me some amazing insight on Tippy. I’m surprised he made it here at all. Forbes gave him quite a roughing up.”

  Jem winced. Was it possible, she thought, to feel someone else’s pain?

  Jem made to go up the stairs but found her feet weighted to the step. She heard Merinda run the faucet and begin her evening toilette. She inhaled a breath that she held until she felt lightheaded.

  Invisible wheels turned in her head nearly as loudly as the grandfather clock tolling the late hour.

  From the corner of her eye she spotted Ray’s notebook on the desk. She couldn’t believe it sat there, exposed, with him slumbering closely nearby. Mrs. Malone had found it under her bed* and Jem had mumbled something about needing to keep it. Thus, it made its way to the front bureau. Her heart skipped in an irregular beat. She moved in its direction on tiptoe, watching carefully as the oil lamp flickered and danced, eerie shadows enlarging objects into towering monsters.

  Jem often wondered as to Ray’s age. In sleep, she could see his youthful face betrayed more years of life than she initially thought. A shadow beyond the dancing lamp hovered over his unshaven face, the stubble flecked with gray.

  She inched closer. Mrs. Malone had tied a white bandage on his forehead. Jem watched his breath whisper across the pillow. She drank in that face, her favorite weakness. Jem balled her fists to fight the inkling pricking the ends of her fingertips. She’d always wondered what his thick, dark hair would feel like to her touch. Surely she had spent enough time over the last several months mulling on it—when he was hatless, or when its luster was restrained by his bowler, or under that tweed cap that took half a dozen years off his face.

  Jem leaned forward, extended her arm, intent on a thought that would never cross the mind of a proper lady. She retreated. Then she took a deep breath and extended her slightly trembling fingers and…

  It was thicker than she had imagined. The slightest flick of her fingers exposed gray underneath its ebony surface. Her nerves exploded. Was it just that she was taking liberty that made her flush to the tips of her ears, or was it that… that…?

  She loved him. She had spent her whole life tripping over interactions with the opposite sex, but she never fathomed that it was because she hadn’t met him yet. When God made a Jem, she was sure He must have made a Ray. She’d do anything for this man, she decided, still feeling the weight of his hair on her fingers even as she slowly backed away. She would sacrifice, even change or improve or refine.

  Her hand, still tingling, fell at her side. She crossed her arms as her mind whizzed in a thousand directions at once, barreling ahead of her.

  “You’re thinking rather loudly, Jemima.” There was a sly smile in Ray’s sleepy voice.

  Startled, Jem tripped back and dashed from the room, flurrying up the stairs and slamming her bedroom door behind her.

  Ray’s head throbbed something fierce but sleep wouldn’t come to him again. He sat up and the room spun in the darkness. Outside he could hear the echoing clop of a horse’s hooves. He picked up the lamp and washed the room with its buttery light. Vowing that anything he found in the bower of the bachelor girls would never make it into the pages of the Hog, Ray walked over to the window where the pale yellow light from the streetlamps was puddling on the pavement. He let the lace curtains rustle to rest. To his right was a chalkboard. He raised the lamp to it and connected the dots of its elaborate web. Articles had been pasted there, and ideas were scrawled in a sure, strong hand he was sure belonged to Merinda.

  Many about Gavin Crawley. Many about his gambling debts. A lot familiar to him from the night after he and Merinda broke into the Globe. Ray’s eyes fell from the board and to the bureau beside it. It was scattered with papers, missives, and telegrams. He tipped the lamp closer to make out writing. Some notes thanked the Ward detectives, while other notes were of a more housekeeping nature: lists and a budget in a much more feminine hand, most likely Jemima’s. He fanned his fingers out and searched a little more, peeking over his shoulder to ensure that their housekeeper was still abed—that his exploration was not disrupting her slumber.

  Then his fingers felt something so familiar it felt like it belonged in his hand. Its weight filled his palm, and with the sensation a cask of memory spilled open.

  His journal.

  She had lied to him. To him! Sojourned into the deepest thoughts he had. He was exposed. Not, he supposed, unlike a girl, sopping wet, trousers around her ankles outside a theatre.

  The space of the room closed around him. His palm found the throbbing pulse of his injured head. Clutching the book tightly, he mazed back to the sofa and lowered himself gingerly. The words… . He deftly thumbed through the pages, words springing and warmly reuniting him with his past… All of them.

  The words: cajoling and crowded, pricking his skull and plucking his memory. She had held them all in her lavender-scented hands, internalized behind the chestnut fringe of her curls.

  She knew it all.

  He sat, delighted at reclaiming a part of himself, yet betrayed that his heart and poetry had been pried open.

  His anger rose, flushing his face. He wrestled out of his coat and vest, repositioning himself on the sofa in his shirtsleeves, collar buttons open, wincing as his careless movements wreaked havoc on his ribs. Finally, in that strange moment wedged between deep night and the promise of hovering day, he drifted to sleep.

  Morning came, peering through the window and spilling over the Persian carpet. Mrs. Malone followed with a pot of fresh water and a smile.

  Ray rubbed his eyes. Opening them, he recalled why he was here, feeling the bandage at his head and, like a similar wound, found the notebook Jemima had taken.

  He removed the blanket from his stretched frame and accepted coffee while declining breakfast. If he could escape with but a note to Merinda for her kindness and get out into the safe, sane day, he would do so. He didn’t want to see Jem. He didn’t want to see the flash of embarrassment on her pretty face, nor did he want to experience the temper he would fail to swallow down while he listened to her recant and give whatever explanation she would trip over for the book being in her possession.

  Jem couldn’t believe how stupid she had been to have kept the journal as long as she had, knowing full well Mrs. Malone’s efficiency. Why the housekeeper was a downright busybody at times. She stared at her pale, sleep-deprived, worried-wracked face in her mirror and noted the purple moons under her blurry eyes. Her fingertips held a memory that her heart sped up to snatch and keep. She straightened her shoulders.

  Finally, she tilted her chin and descended the staircase. Best dispel the strange looks and small talk before Merinda arrived.

  Ray was at the bannister, slowly, painfully shrugging into his coat.

  “You can’t leave!” she told him. “You can’t. You’re not well enough. We’ll ring Jasper to bring Jones by.”

  Ray turned, and the smile that met her was sardonic, while his eyes flashed fire: “I’m sorry, our housekeeper took your coat to launder,” he imitated in sarcastic singsong while holding up his notebook.

  The blood drained from Jem’s face, throat, and all the way down to her toes. She gripped the bannister. “Oh.”

  “Why do you have this, Jemima?”

  “I kept it.” She watched him swallow, even as those coal eyes of his sparked. “I couldn’t bear to give it back to you because I would miss it. And I thought a hundred times of how I would explain it to you, but… ”

  She inched closer. He stepped back. She closed in again. He was now nearly at the door, his hand reaching for the knob. The book was clutched possessively, but every part of him seemed magnetically drawn in her direction. Then, unexpectedly, his ink-stained fingers found their way in her hair. Close, her body unsure which sensation to follow, his fingers explored her loose, unkempt curls. He touched her cheek then. His finger trailed down her face, claiming her with words yet to be spoken.

  She cau
ght her breath as he stiffened and retreated.

  “You shouldn’t have kept this!” His voice was surly. “It means a lot to me and I thought I had lost it. Now you know everything. The bad, the horrible. You had no right.”

  “I… ”

  His hands found her wrists and gripped tightly. “Stop being ridiculous, Jemima.” His eyes lingered over the open book of her face.

  “I can’t stop it!” Jem’s voice was a stubborn sob. “I won’t try.”

  When he spoke again, he made a concerted effort to even his voice to passionless and stale: “This is a silly schoolgirl fantasy. It’s not worth it.” He threw her arms down and crossed his own. His hands moved at a speed that matched his thoughts. “I don’t want to hear you talk to me about this again. Do you hear me?” He tucked the notebook in his breast pocket and adjusted his bandage.

  Jem knew she had taken a piece of him. Knew and wanted to safeguard it, even still. She wanted to act as keeper of his beautiful words. The vulnerable bits of their beautiful city that no one ever saw.

  “You changed everything for me,” she admitted tremulously, thinking of the way that his journal and his terrible poetry inspired her to walk the city streets as if viewing it for the first time. She would look up to note the ornamentation rimming every roof; she would look down and notice the homeless with their hands outstretched, the children lacing through the traffic, knee-high, attempting to beat each other at a game of tag. “I see everything differently now. I wake up and the city is new. I go to work and that is new too, and when Merinda and I go out and solve these little mysteries of ours… well, you’re there too! I believe in everything you’ve ever written and everything you will ever say. Your thoughts are my thoughts. Don’t you see?” She emboldened herself; erected her spine. “But I can’t say them. I can’t speak for those who can’t speak for themselves. I am just a woman. But you… ” she pointed at him. “You can tell the world. You can use those words of yours like a knife that cuts through everything that is unjust and horrible and you can make it right.”